Social Media

In 2003 I was introduced to Konstantine Guerke who returned to the US from Germany and was about to join the founding team of a company called LinkedIn.

While I was running a Channel Management software company BlueRoads, I acted as an adviser to Konstantin and we spend several hours exploring where this all could go, how to attract executives to this (back then) “funky” idea of online networking and many other related things including features and functions as well as strategic directions and behavior aspects of the new world.

After a while it was pretty clear to me: Social Media will not be just a new technology or a new set of tools but the enabler for a radically changing society.

While building a business in the social media space I consulted some of the largest organizations, helping them to strategically apply social media. Those projects where not about a social media campaign or social media marketing but all about competing for the customers mind share, creating a better customer experience and recreating a corporate culture that can sustain through the rapidly changing socio-economic landscape.

Today (2011) I run social media software company XeeMe, helping people to organize their social presence, share it with others and monitor their social development. I also chair the social media Academy, which I co-founded with Marita Roebkes, today the president of the Academy. Together with some of the best Social Media Strategist from around the world I help grow the Social Business Consulting Group.

What Is Social Media

While social media is theoretically a technology for sharing information and facilitating conversations between people in an easy and social manner – social media evolved to an engagement model that introduced significant change to our society both in business and non business relationships.

Social media is in part responsible for the democratization of influence, bringing down previously dominating industrial media based news distribution and corporate marketing information dissemination. Through the omnipresent Internet and the ability to create unlimited personal connections around the glob, the number of trusted sources of information is growing, less structured and more individual than ever before. The model of influence significantly changed through the use of social media, which in turn changed the way ‘educated purchase decisions’ are made, which created the attention of business executives.

Businesses and governments leverage social media primarily to strengthen customer or political relationships, create a better customer experience or a better political climate and benefit from the fast way of getting feedback on all aspects of their respective businesses.

Individuals use social media to share parts of their lives with friends and family as well as random connections by publishing thoughts, opinions, experience, photos, images, video clips and in many other ways. Some use social media to find new jobs or strengthen or present their skills.